The New Conspirators – Part 2

This is a book review of Tom Sine’s book, The New Conspirators, by IVP. Part 2 is a review of Conversation I: Taking the new conspirators seriously.

In this first conversation, Tom provides an overview of what he sees are the four streams or expressions of the New Conspirators. These four are emerging, missional, mosaic, and monastic.

• The Emerging Stream: Tom’s review here is cursory and he even says so. A clearer and much more detailed review was provided by Gibbs and Bolger in Emerging Churches, or Frost and Hirsch in Shaping of Things To Come. He does provide some of the history that leads up to the emerging expressions, which were more prominent in the UK.
• The Missional Stream: Sine provides an insight here that I was not really aware of. He points to the missional as arising out of academia. He points to the work of Leslie Newbigin, Darrell Gruder, Frost and Hirsch, and Alan Roxburgh.
• The Mosaic Stream: This stream arises out of the reality that the church must embrace each expression of God’s creation. He points to the urban hip/hop church as example of new expressions that are coming out of urban areas. They are decidedly multicultural and using multiple forms of art and culture to renew.
• The Monastic Stream: This stream arises out of the desire for social justice and the call to the poor. This stream has several expressions within it and is the most focuses on social justice. Monastic communities have little interest in church planting and provide deeper theological arguments for their way of life.

Overall, I found the conversation broken down into four streams evocative. I found myself identifying with each in a fresh new way, saying, “That’s me.” The four streams are somewhat like personalities in the crowd. Each is just different and each can learn from each other. The review is cursory, but this doesn’t really matter. There are already well written works on each stream.

The conversation is also different in that it is not a theological observation. There is not real breakdown of what each group believes. I found this actually refreshing. The four streams are not active breakdowns of beliefs but actions. This has already done well here by Jason Clark.

I would place myself in the emerging missional stream. Although I am not monastic in the traditional sense, I would hold that the missional church is very interested in both inward and outward mission, of which the poor are specific call. Another thing is that I guess I just always assumed that the church is mosaic. In fact some of the most interesting expressions typically are new and come from unexpected places.

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